The Collaborative Advantage: Principles for the Next Generation of Multi-Benefit Projects in L.A. County
Los Angeles County is in a state of climate and social emergency that increasingly threatens the health, safety, and security of its people, economy, and ecosystems.
Photo Credit: Tree People
Adapting to climate change and mitigating those risks requires significant investments in infrastructure and social goods and services. This invites a strategic reassessment of the long-term strategy for delivering public benefits, including reducing climate hazard risk, providing economic opportunity, and making investments that enhance quality of life and equitable outcomes. Addressing such complex challenges with meaningful investments and support systems requires unprecedented collaboration among citizens, governments, and the private sector—one that the public sector is uniquely positioned to lead. A whole-systems approach to climate adaptation and climate resilience that incorporates an ecological perspective and favors collaborative efforts can help unlock social and environmental synergies, leverage additional funding, support representative participatory processes to develop holistic, sustainable, multi-benefit responses to these multidimensional challenges.
A collaborative approach to multi-benefit project development, funding, and management can lead to more sustainable and equitable resilience outcomes for more people. Using evidence from Los Angeles County, this research explores applications of whole-systems approaches to collaborative multi-benefit projects, identifies factors that contribute to project success, uncovers barriers to achieving project goals, and provides actionable recommendations for getting started. Although the empirical work is focused on L.A. County, the findings and insights from this work are designed for broader application.
OUr partnership
Earth Economics has been working with Accelerate Resilience Los Angeles (ARLA) since 2021 to advance the impacts of multi-benefit projects in L.A. County and beyond. Earth Economics first supported ARLA’s Safe Clean Water Program Working Group, by creating a Benefit-Cost Analysis Tool that quantifies the benefits of different project implementation scenarios. More recently, Earth Economics conducted empirical research on collaborative multi-benefit infrastructure projects in L.A. County. The report, “The Collaborative Advantage: Principles for the Next Generation of Multi-Benefit Projects in Los Angeles County,” synthesizes findings from a review of the collaborative governance literature, expert interviews, an analysis of various attributes’ effects on project performance, and an assessment of three case studies. These findings are organized into key principles and specific action opportunities that will improve collaborative multi-benefit projects to advance and accelerate resilience.